Nelson launched a second brewing identity, Hubbard’s Cave, to make trendier beer styles that he could sell himself, rather than share profits with his distributor.

He had a messy breakup with that distributor.

Facing bankruptcy, he laid off his sole employee in 2014 and operated Une Annee with the help of volunteers for more than a year.

He abandoned his dream of brewing in Chicago to set up shop in a bland strip mall in northwest suburban Niles.

And, oh yes, in February, a man fell asleep at the wheel of his SUV and crashed through the storefront window of Une Annee’s taproom. (No one was hurt, fortunately.)

At last, Nelson is ready for stability for 5-year-old Une Annee. It comes next year in the form of a spacious new brewery, also in Niles, which will more than triple his current space.

The 27,000-square-foot brewery will be among the anchors in an arts and entertainment development along Niles’ southern edge, built around the suburb’s iconic half-size replica of the Leaning Tower of Pisa. The brewery will feature a taproom and a kitchen serving smoked meats. Nelson hopes to have the space operating by summer.

Through the peaks and valleys, Nelson, 45, a Chicago native and Lane Tech graduate, never wavered from his decision to leave an architecture career to enter a craft beer industry that has grown increasingly competitive. He didn’t have a choice.

“I don’t know if (regret) ever crossed my mind,” Nelson said. “I did say to myself, ‘I dug a huge hole and am going to lose a lot of money if I don’t figure this out.’”

He seems to have figured it out. Both Une Annee and Hubbard’s Cave are ranked as “exceptional” by users of the Beer Advocate website, which Nelson achieved by unapologetically embracing trends.

Josh Noel/Chicago Tribune

Framboise, from left, hazy IPA and stout at the Une Annee/Hubbard's Cave taproom in Niles. Owner Jerry Nelson has had success since embracing beer style trends.

Une Annee pivoted from classic Belgian styles — think saison, dubbel and tripel — to sour and wild ales. Hubbard’s Cave was the bigger boon, providing Nelson a vehicle to make two of the hottest styles in craft beer: hazy double IPA and sweet, boozy stouts.

When Nelson made his first American-style IPA in 2015, two years after launching Une Annee, he had just laid off his sole employee. He was desperate to right the ship.

“You either adjust or you close your door,” he said. “I decided to adjust as the market told me what I needed to do.”

Belgian beer had been a calculation, a possible hole in the market that could be filled by mimicking Brewery Ommegang, in Cooperstown, N.Y., long known for brewing classic Belgian styles.

“I was naive in thinking that was going to work,” Nelson said.

(In recent years, Ommegang has also learned the limits of brewing classic Belgian beer, launching a marketing partnership with the “Game of Thrones” television show and embracing trendier styles, such as various IPAs.)

Nelson also felt constrained by his distribution agreement with Breakthru Beverage, the intermediary selling Une Annee to bars and stores.

“Neither of us was happy with the relationship,” Nelson said.

Nelson said Une Annee sales weren’t enough to sustain his business, leading to the launch of Hubbard’s Cave in September 2015 — which Nelson chose to distribute himself, raising the ire of Breakthru Beverage.

State law gives distributors iron-clad control over their agreements with breweries, but Breakthru ultimately allowed Nelson to break his Une Annee contract.

Hubbard’s Cave provided a crucial turning point, both in terms of making beers people wanted to drink and Nelson keeping more of his profits through self-distribution. Nelson has since become an evangelist for small breweries to self-distribute, at least when first building a brand.

“If I didn’t start self-distributing something, I was going to go bankrupt,” he said. “It was that dire.”

Breakthru Beverage declined to comment.

While draft sales were better with Breakthru — “They have more connections in bars than I do” — he said bottle sales have improved. Business is now healthy and has grown every quarter for the past two years, Nelson said.

Josh Noel/Chicago Tribune

Une Annee (and its sibling, Hubbard's Cave) moved to a strip mall in Niles in 2015 after two years in Chicago. Its new brewery will also be in Niles.

Une Annee (and its sibling, Hubbard's Cave) moved to a strip mall in Niles in 2015 after two years in Chicago. Its new brewery will also be in Niles. (Josh Noel/Chicago Tribune)

Much of that turnaround is also rooted in opening Une Annee’s taproom, sandwiched between a Korean restaurant and a dollar store in that strip mall in February 2017. It is the picture of American suburbia, drab and bland, a single red sign — “BREWERY” — summoning beer drinkers above the entrance.

What’s inside is far from the polished image projected by most breweries. The floor is chipped and well-worn. The drop ceiling would be at home in any insurance office. The black wood bar — maple wood flooring, built by Nelson’s brother — is dented and chipped. Decor was bought at Target and Ikea.

Nelson doesn’t even operate a proper brewhouse; he uses an open-topped liquid transport container to steep his wort — the liquid that eventually ferments into beer — before transferring it to a brew kettle across the room that in reality is a large stainless steel holding tank. Unlike most breweries, most everything is on wheels — including a portion of the bar.

“We move things around as we need,” Nelson said. “It was a pretty inexpensive way to get started.”

Josh Noel/Chicago Tribune

Skid marks remain in the Une Annee taproom from an SUV that crashed through the front window Feb. 28, 2018.

Skid marks remain in the Une Annee taproom from an SUV that crashed through the front window Feb. 28, 2018. (Josh Noel/Chicago Tribune)

The taproom made news Feb. 28, when an 84-year-old man fell asleep at the wheel and drove into Une Annee, shattering glass, overturning chairs and launching drywall in all directions. Nelson opted to leave the skid marks on the floor, just inside the entrance.

“It’s interesting character and just part of the story of the brewery,” he said.

Still, the taproom was crucial for Une Annee’s survival. It provided Nelson a means to connect with customers and sell his beer without a distributor or a retailer getting a cut. (It’s the reason most breweries open with taprooms these days.)

Though that taproom will continue operating until its lease runs out in 2021, all brewing operations will head to the new location, at 6343 W. Gross Point Road. The building was most recently a film storage warehouse. Most brewery owners rent their space, but Nelson said he bought the building for $1.5 million. He plans $500,000 of upgrades.

“Dealing with landlords and leases works for a lot of people, but I’d like to own and not move ever again,” he said.

Une Annee will be the first business to open in Niles’ redevelopment of an 80-acre triangle of land along Touhy Avenue envisioned as an arts, cultural and entertainment hub built around the Leaning Tower.

Including a brewery was essential, said Ross Klicker, Niles’ economic development coordinator. Two years ago, the village was hoping to lure a brewery to the suburb by easing licensing and zoning for brewers and distillers. Une Annee’s strip-mall location was always considered a stopgap for a more ambitious project, he said.

“It doesn’t take a genius to see what Revolution is doing and what Goose Island did, and realize that by having a brewery there, you might strike gold,” Klicker said.

He had never heard of Une Annee when Nelson first reached out, but Klicker said the partnership has been fruitful for both sides.

“Une Annee has a very unique product,” Klicker said. “They tap into an avid connoisseur that will seek them out. We’ve already seen that with his existing brewery in Niles. We believe it fits in well with our Touhy Avenue master plan.”

Now healthy again, Une Annee has eight employees and distributes small amounts of beer to targeted markets in eight states. (Breakthru Beverage continues to distribute Une Annee and Hubbard’s Cave in Wisconsin.)

Josh Noel/Chicago Tribune

Une Annee founder Jerry Nelson at the brewery kettle at his Niles brewery. Nelson plans to launch a new, larger brewery in Niles in 2019.

Nelson will buy two 60-barrel fermentation tanks for his new space, which will quadruple his output. He’ll have the ability to produce a whopping 20,000 barrels of beer — quite a leap from the 3,500 he expects to make in 2019. (He’s making about 2,200 in 2018 and made 700 in 2017.)

But if Une Annee gets that big, it will happen deliberately. Nelson will use the newfound capacity to make IPAs — as opposed to the double IPAs he tends to brew — and lighter stouts. He might even return to making the occasional saison.

“How much more we want to grow, I don’t know,” Nelson said. “But we’re not going to be the brewery that just makes beer and hopes it sells. We’re going to match up to sales rates in the markets we’re in and maybe just push it a little bit.”

Nelson has a quote on a new 30-barrel brewhouse, but for now plans to stick with the open-top liquid transport container that got him where he is.

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